@freeNYTimes

The @freeNYTimes Twitter account publishes a link to every New York Times article, allowing readers to circumvent the Times’ paywall and read more than their allotted 20 articles a month.

On March 17th, The New York Times announced their long-anticipated subscription service would begin in 11 days. Included in the announcement was this footnote:

Readers who come to Times articles through links from search, blogs and social media like Facebook and Twitter will be able to read those articles, even if they have reached their monthly reading limit.

Several days later, the New York Times contacted Twitter, asking them to disable the feed because they claimed it was in violation of their trademark. A mirror account was registered at @freeUnnamedNews just in time for the original feed to be suspended.

While the @freeNYTimes account is currently only “followed” by a little more than 2000 Twitter users, it is suspected that the account is used by many more outside of the typical “follow” subscription model, which would otherwise flood a user’s feed.